"Priestley seems to have recognised the wisdom of complicating, if not concealing, his messages. Although the Inspector’s final speech acquires a certain dramatic irony from the play’s setting in 1912, its tone of Old Testament prophecy leaves little doubt that its author meant it for the ages. “We don’t live alone,” booms Goole before stalking from the stage. “We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”

"This reads equally well as apocalyptic socialism, pacifist prophecy or imitation of Christ, and it is the cryptic motor that has powered An Inspector Calls through 70 years of changing culture. Long may it run."

Funny that the play should screen just as the Labour Party's election of a socialist, pacifist and decent-hearted (though possibly mistaken in his policies) chap has both Blairites and Tory media gibbering.

For some decades, the two main parties in Parliament seem to have had leaders facing each other who somehow matched like bookends. Could this suggest that a replacement may be found, not for Corbyn, but for Cameron?

Peter Hitchens hopes so:"Millions are weary of being smarmed and lied to by
people who actually are not that competent or impressive, and who have been
picked because they look good on TV rather than because they have ideas or
character..."My hope, most unlikely to be realised, is that a
patriotic, conservative and Christian equivalent of Mr Corbyn will emerge to
take him on, and will demonstrate, by his or her strength of conviction, that
there is an even greater demand for that cause than there is for old-fashioned
leftism."

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2 comments:

Last night I was reading (or re-reading) the introductory essay in the book 'Revolution in the Head' by Ian MacDonald and this phrase caught my eye (page 29 if you are interested) -

"The truth is that, once the obsolete Christian compact of the fifties had broken down, there was nothing - apart from, in the last resort, money - holding western civilisation together."

I have been mulling over that today and when I read Hitchens I thought, 'ah, yes; you are right but you are wrong' Most people would agree with the idea that there has been a wave of antipathy towards the 'political class' across Europe but there is more to it than that.Politicians have always been rather bland and uninspiring figures for the most part but we tolerate them because we are getting on with our lives and up until recently, life has been comfortable. That began to change with the 'financial crisis'

Corbyn is anti-austerity as is Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece and people are voting with their pockets. And, despite all the fine words, people have always voted for what will be financially beneficial; very very few people vote on idealogical grounds.In the same way, votes for the likes of Farage or Wilders or le Pen etc, are also votes against what is perceived to threaten our current comfortable way of life; immigration poses a threat in the form of cheap labour and the cost to taxpayers of the infrastructure, social services etc that will be necessary.

Read Macdonald's words again: financial well-being is the only thing which gives stability to the post- modern, post religious Western world'

Ian MacDonald is not the first to see this of course.The late Terence McKenna also spoke out very elegantly against the materialism of the modern world. Without our endless distractions in the form of 'entertainment' and our endless supply of new gadgets to play with, we are lost.

Fritz Schumacher also saw it and wrote in his 1977 book "A Guide For the Perplexed" -

"The modern experiment to live without religion has failed, and once we have understood this, we know what our post-modern tasks really are."

So the current 'crisis' is not economic or social, it is existential/spiritual and needs to be recognised as such.

"This reads equally well as apocalyptic socialism, pacifist prophecy or imitation of Christ"

It does. G K Chesterton saw Christianity as providing us with the ideal of the divine man, ideal in the sense of providing us with a standard against which we measure our human realities. Politics and atheism have no good alternative, in spite of the current rash of enthusiasm for principles.